the psychic armour of having sensible people around
coming to live in the very real reality of the people who love you
some psychic wounds are so intense they drive you into sabotaging yourself
because the grief is too much to bear
“am i fat?”
“no”
“you’re lying”
“you’re not fat”
“no, YOU’RE LYING. *cries*”
[relationship worsens]
[next day]
“am i fat?”
*slightly annoyed now* “no”
*picking up on annoyance* “ok…” *not reassured*
[next day]
“AM I FAT?”
“no—”
—“you’re lying!! you’re lying!! *sobbing* i can’t do this anymore”
when the woman yells “AM I FAT?” she is not asking the “say the right word back” game, she is asking “CAN YOU MATCH MY FUCKING ENERGY PLEASE I AM DROWNING.”
when she asks, “am i fat?”, she is saying, “I AM DROWNING IN CENTURIES OF TOXIC ENERGY AROUND MY BODY IMAGE, [parenthesis: YOU FUCKING IMBECILE YOU THINK THIS IS A JOKE].”
when the woman is around a partner or lover, his presence triggers the presence of a Huge Fucking Wound that will Keep Hurting until Something Changes, and i hate to say it, but sometimes that’s until the trigger leaves
the self-sabotage will continue until the trigger is removed or the capacity for grief improves
what do you do with wounds so big? that reassurance from a single person feels like a joke
someone can say something reassuring, 10 men and come out and say, “i love your belly pooch,” and yet it can feel hollow, because you sense there is still something real
the potential for vicious sense of judgment, that you will be eviscerated by the world, for your body, still feels real
just because those 10 men like you doesn’t mean the men you want will. they might not even be the men you want if they already like you like that
even though those 10 people are trying to reassure you, your body still has a knowing about the world. what about the rest of the world? you are still unsafe
for better or worse, bodies are not stupid. they hang on to fear as long as they need to
as long as there is no sense of home, they still might not be safe
why is reassuring people so hard at times?
A: because what they need is not reassurance but grief
they do not need the rug pulled; the rug was already pulled on them
there’s a thing i called “motherless behaviour.” there’s a set of characteristics behaviours that give it away
one of those is not knowing what a home is
one of those is not knowing that you are not meant to be subject to the whims of the random populace. that is okay and sane to primarily care about the people and friends you most love and associate with, and let them define your emotional reality
people with motherless behaviour don’t know that. they sort of just exist everywhere, like orphans, as if they had no distinction between home and not home, trusted friend and not friend. they try to live, homeless, in the lap of everyone they meet
the world is an insane place to live in. these kind of buffers keep you sane
i’ve been reading a book called Women Who Run With The Wolves. one of the persistent themes in the fairy tales and myths the book talks about the is the concept of invoking and calling upon your brothers and sisters to be safe
having a tribe of friends and trusted people who you allow to define your emotional reality and relationship to such sensitive things as bodily image and sexual worthiness is real and okay
that’s been a radical concept for me. i didn’t grow up making these distinctions. i didn’t think it was safe to let an inner group define my emotional reality, because the inner group of people i was around at the time i did not like, agree with, or feel safe around. so, i had motherless behaviour. no discernment; no in, out, home, not
in the context of deep-seated fears about sexual worthiness, allowing a few legitimate, trusted people to define your notion of sanity and social reality for you as you navigate the world is sane behaviour
stated in other words:
the boyfriend’s attempts to reassure his girlfriend make it worse
because what she needs, and what i need, is not reassurance—because it will seem thin, and will not convince us—but grief: something acknowledging that thing was fucking real, allowing tears for it, and then opening up to the possibility the present might just be different
and the sense of home, that despite the fact that insane people will still exist, we can safely ignore most of them
begin living in the very real reality of those who love us
the people who already love me, really do
i can begin inhabiting their reality—my reality. the people who do find me attractive, or worth listening to, or fundamentally cherishable,
not an orphan braced for the world, but a child of a village that loves
i don’t know why i wrote this post. mostly because it was a long way of avoiding the next post im writing, which terrifies me to write, which i will come back and link here